Sen. Coburn Debunks His Own Report

December 21, 2011 2:15 pm ET —
Jamison Foser

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK)
has produced yet another list of government
spending that he considers wasteful largely because it sounds funny — but this
time, Coburn seems a bit defensive over criticism he's received for similar
previous reports.

Coburn's typical
approach is to catalogue government spending that he can caricature with
silly-sounding headlines, much of it constituting a trivial amount of money,
and lambaste the "wasteful" spending without bothering to assess the actual
merits.

As usual, Coburn's
latest effort is a frivolous "report" that not only fails to make any serious
effort to assess the validity of the programs it assails, but also lumps
together large expenditures with small, not even bothering to distinguish
between trivial and significant spending.

"Wartime Contracting
Waste and Fraud Costs Taxpayers Billions — (Iraq and Afghanistan) $4.38
billion" is the 40th entry — 22 slots after a $48,700 expenditure for an
agriculture event. The report devotes more words to $697,006 in "Federal
Transportation Dollars to Make Las Vegas Highways Beautiful" than to the $4.38
billion in "Wartime Contracting Waste and Fraud."

A $6,279 expenditure for
snow cone machines (the Michigan state government says they're meant to help
treat heat exhaustion during emergencies) makes the opening sentence of
Coburn's introduction. Meanwhile, the introduction doesn't even mention wartime
contracting, which accounts for $4.38 billion of the $6.9 billion in total "waste"
identified in the report — more than 60 percent.

But Coburn's failure to even try to distinguish between large amounts of waste and small is only his second-biggest failing. The largest, as always, is that he hasn't actually identified "waste." He's identified things that sound wasteful, without bothering to determine whether they really are — and, in some cases, whether they actually exist.

Less than two months ago, Coburn was caught denouncing a laundry list of
non-existent spending — which he would have known was non-existent had he
bothered to contact the targets of his attacks before releasing the report in
question. That followed a stream of criticism earlier this year from scientists
who accused him of misrepresenting their work in an attack
on National Science Foundation grants — and who, contrary to Coburn's office's claim that he sought comment from grant
recipients, said they hadn't been
contacted.

Coburn's latest report
suggests he's feeling the heat over the criticism that he hasn't bothered to
assess the merits of the spending he attacks. Take a look at this remarkable
portion of Coburn's introduction, with two key paragraphs highlighted in blue:

Coburn's report is
titled "2011 Wastebook: A Guide to Some of the Most Wasteful and Low Priority
Government Spending of 2011." In his introduction, Coburn writes that the
report details "unnecessary, duplicative, or just plain stupid projects." But
on the very same page, in an adjacent paragraph, Coburn admits: "Some of the
projects listed within this report may indeed serve useful purposes or have merit."

That's a pretty perfect
snapshot of Tom Coburn: railing against "unnecessary, duplicative, or just
plain stupid" spending that, oh, by the way, might actually "serve useful
purposes" and "have merit." He doesn't know — or care. He just wants the
headlines.